AT&T to Pay $105 Million to End Mobile Cramming Suit
In the largest settlement of its kind, AT&T’s wireless unit will pay $105 million in fines and consumer refunds for billing customers for services they did not authorize.
The settlement, announced Wednesday by the Federal Trade Commission, comes in a case in which customers of the unit, called AT&T Mobility, were wrongfully charged for ringtones, text-messaged “fun facts,” horoscopes and other services, a practice known as “mobile cramming.” While no total estimate of the number of people affected or the exact amount involved was given, the FTC said the charges were in the “hundreds of millions of dollars.”
According to the FTC, AT&T received more than 1 million complaints in 2011 from overbilled customers but continued the practice. At one point, AT&T even made it harder for customers to get refunds, regulators said. The company kept at least 35 percent of the money generated by the charges, which were tucked inconspicuously in bills under deceptive headings, the FTC said.
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